The empty glass stood there like an accusation. It must have held something once. There was a multitude of possibilities of what the glass held, why it held it, for whom, and when it was once filled. The permutations were mind-boggling. And thus it accused him, he who was staring at the glass and thinking of the possibilities.
What if it hadn’t held anything? The thought made him smile one of those shy, sly smiles that only can be seen in the eyes at the right angle when the light was just perfect. Not too dark; not too light. If the glass had held nothing, as it was holding now, then there wouldn’t be a problem, would there? There was no plot, no story, just a stasis that was as endless as the possibilities of what the glass should have held had it held anything.
No. The glass held something. He was sure of it. He couldn’t succumb to this overwhelming urge to reduce everything to some kind of inductive nihilism that, once it was injected into the mind like some kind of cocaine laced heroine, was as addictive and necessary as the air itself, as the water that was only just one possibility of what was once held in that air-filled vacuum that stared at him back, accused him totally, made him cringe at all the infinitudes he ever read about—the worlds within words within worlds. Everything. Everything and nothing was in that glass now, and everything and nothing was in that glass once. He stopped his eyesmile.
Was there residue? Prima facie there were no apparent markings that could indicate what, if anything, the glass had held. There were no water marks, no evaporated soda residue, no faint whiff of dried up vodka. He could easily—the empty glass was within reach—lift the glass and inspect it closely to ensure the accuracy of his initial observations, but there was something sacrosanct about the glass, as if it had become some kind of dead idol in a temple of long ago where the glass would hold the libations for gods that no one worshipped anymore nor cared about nor thought even existed. The glass had become an artifact.
But why? Why was he here staring at the glass, staring at the base of it to see if there were water marks on the oaken unvarnished desk which propped up the glass as Atlas propped up the globe in ether-filled space? The possibilities here were infinite. There were more explanations than he wanted to enumerate, and they were all as empty to him as the glass was void of liquid. But there was the gas. Surely air filled the glass now. It existed. But some things, he suddenly felt in the back of his spine as if it had been injected there, existed and yet were empty. This epiphany shot up to his mind and emptied it of everything that he was thinking about.
The glass accused him.
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